The Really Bad Dogs of War
by Srdja Trifkovic
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Focusing on Blackwater while neglecting MPRI is like investigating Ivan Demjanjuk for years on end, but allowing Adolf Eichmann to live peacefully in Buenos Aires.
Up to 17 Iraqis were killed on September 16 by mercenaries working for the security company Blackwater USA, in what Iraqi and some U.S. officials say was unprovoked murder. Earlier this week two Armenian Christian women were killed by Unity Resources Group hired guns. A devastating report by the House Oversight Committee accused Blackwater of acting like murderous cowboys, but the firm still operates with impunity—unaccountable under either U.S. or Iraqi law. Yet while exposing the misdeeds of “security contractors” is necessary and long overdue, it is curious that the media have neglected the work of a far more sinister mercenary outfit, one that has caused thousand-fold more death and suffering over the years.
Since time immemorial kings and governments have hired militarily skilled men and groups to do their fighting and provide security services. In the two decades since the Iran-Contra scandal, however, a few major “international security firms” and “private military contractors” have come into being to satisfy a particular requirement of the U.S. government: to provide military training, logistics, arms, equipment and advice to foreign clients whenever it is desirable for Washington to be able to plausibly deny direct American involvement. The most important among them has been MPRI. The firm has claimed “more generals per square foot than in the Pentagon,” including Gen. Carl E. Vuono, the former Army chief of staff; Gen. Crosbie E. Saint, the former commander of the US Army in Europe; and Gen. Ron Griffith, the former Army vice chief of staff. There are also dozens of retired top-ranked generals and thousands of former military personnel, including elite special forces, on the firm’s books.
MPRI is to Blackwater what a general is to a sergeant. It is less interested in the heat of combat than—in its own words—in “training, equipping, force design and management, professional development, concepts and doctrine, organizational and operational requirements, simulation and wargaming operations, humanitarian assistance, quick reaction military contractual support, and democracy transition assistance programs.”
When the 1991 UN arms embargo prevented the Clinton Administration from helping Croats and Bosnian Muslims directly, MPRI was engaged to do all that the U.S. government preferred not to do openly. In 1994 it referred MPRI to Croatia’s visiting defense minister Gojko Susak, who duly contracted the company to train and equip its forces. According to U.S. Army War College Quarterly, with the explicit consent of the U.S. State and Defense Departments the firm undertook to modernize and retrain the Croatian army, including the general staff. In the summer of 1995, thanks to such assistance, the formerly inept Croatian army mounted Operation Storm,
using typical American combined-arms tactics, including integrated air, artillery, and infantry movements, as well as maneuver warfare targeted against Serbian command, control, and communication systems. French and British officials accused MPRI of helping to plan the Croatian invasion, an allegation denied by the company. Correctly or not, MPRI received credit for a major success.
This “major success” was the bloodiest episode of ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II. The operation drove a quarter-million Serb civilians from their homes, with MPRI-trained Croat soldiers summarily executing the stragglers and indiscriminately shelling refugees. All along, according to the former head of Croatian counterintelligence, Markica Redic, “the Pentagon had complete supervision during the Storm action.” Miro Tudjman, son of the late president and former head of Croatia’s foreign intelligence, says that during Operation Storm all Croatian electronic intelligence “went online in real time to the National Security Agency in Washington.” Several Croat officers—including MPRI graduates—have been brought to trial for war crimes since that time, but no MPRI employee has ever been charged.
“These new mercenaries work for the Defense and State Department and Congress looks the other way,” the late Colonel David Hackworth, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, commented on MPRI’s role in the Balkan wars. “The American taxpayer is paying for our own mercenary army, which violates what our founding fathers said.”
MPRI was also granted a major contract to train and equip the Bosnian Muslim forces. It was financed by a number of Islamic countries. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Brunei, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia deposited money in the United States Treasury, which MPRI drew against. The Bosnian Muslims received over $100 million in surplus military equipment from the US government “Equip and Train Program,” but MPRI contractors did everything else, from planning long-term strategy to conducting war games and training locals in the use of American weaponry. According to Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution, “It was a brilliant move in that the U.S. government got someone else to pay for what we wanted from a policy standpoint.”
The next MPRI assignment was to train and equip a shadowy guerrilla group accused by the State Department of being a terrorist organization. The military men knew that the Drug Enforcement Administration suspected the guerrillas of smuggling high-grade Afghan heroin into North America and Western Europe, and police agencies across Europe had been alerted to the links among the rebels and the various mafias:
Was this the setting for a Tom Clancy novel? Or was it a flashback to one of the numerous secret meetings attended by the likes of Richard Secord and Oliver North during the Iran-contra scandal of the 1980s? Actually, it was neither. It was a real life and present-day strategy session at MPRI (formerly known as Military Professional Resources, Inc.). Its client: the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
MPRI was subsequently caught off-guard when Bosnia’s Muslim army arranged for millions of dollars worth of arms to be secretly transferred from Bosnian caches to KLA guerrillas in Kosovo and Serbian Muslims in the province of Sandzak. As a result of the arms transfers, the State Department temporarily suspended MPRI’s “train and equip” program—but not for long: soon thereafter the KLA itself became itself a valued client. Col. Hackworth was the first prominent commentator to reveal that MPRI was using former U.S. military personnel to train KLA forces at secret bases inside Albania. Some of the military leadership of the KLA—including Kosovo’s current “prime minister” Agim Ceku, a war criminal par excellence—included veterans of MPRI-planned Operations Storm.
The fruits of MPRI’s work became apparent in the aftermath of NATO bombing. Just like in the Krajina, hundreds of thousands of Serbs were ethnically cleansed, thousands were murdered, their homes looted or burned, their cemeteries vandalized, their churches dynamited.
And finally, in 2001, MPRI enjoyed the rare feat of working for both sides both sides of a Balkan conflict. It was contracted by the government of Macedonia—as part of a U.S. military aid package—“to deter armed aggression and defend Macedonian territory.” It was also helping the local KLA offshoot known as the NLA carry out armed aggression against Macedonian territory. In late June of that year, the Macedonian army undertook a major assault against KLA positions in the village of Aracinovo near Skopje. In a NATO sponsored operation—supposedly to help the Macedonian Army—U.S. troops were sent in to “evacuate” and “disarm” the terrorists. The soldiers “saved” 500 terrorists together with their weaponry, took them to another village, gave them their U.S.-made weapons back, and set them free. But sources in the U.S. Army in Kosovo revealed that the mysterious “evacuation” had the real objective of rescuing and concealing the identity of 17 Americans, MPRI instructors, who were among the withdrawing rebels.
Compared to MPRI, Blackwater are thuggish amateurs; but don’t expect any House Oversight Committee reports or New York Times exposés.
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1 Comment by Aldebanlohoperaldi Huffghaffson on 10 October 2007:
This “major success” was the bloodiest episode of ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II. The operation drove a quarter-million Serb civilians from their homes, with MPRI-trained Croat soldiers summarily executing the stragglers and indiscriminately shelling refugees. (end quote)
America today has crossed the line and is Evil. Sadly. That is not to say americans are. They’re only stupid. Not even spoiled since their oppressors keep them on a tight leash, most of them, economically. More Americans (for one example) per capita – are in jail than in the worst days of the Stalin regime in the former Soviet Union.
Since world war II not a single year has passed that the american military somewhere in the world has not bombed and killed innocent civilians in the name of ‘democracy’ [i.e. empire for the elite few], who also oppress americans here at home, of course. [That's empire.]
We don’t really do it [i.e. empire] too well, either… It’s rather like the Rocky Horror Picture Show – sort of an Empire Burlesque … and even more evil and bloody for being comically so…in partnership with our leader israel. …
‘TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER’… err ok, well, we’ll be boarding flight ___ for jerusalem momentarily e.t. – Unless you just want to meet the lobby-?- … that enough, AIPAC?!
‘ok, want to phone home first. Then, TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER.’
…
old joke – best friends after twenty-five years one of them admits to the other to get it off his chest… he and his best friend’s wife got drunk that one night, the best friend’s truck broke down. And twenty-five years ago, much to their regret ever since, they ‘did it’. (Even they were embarrassed by it the next day, and kept silent to this day.)
old best friend finally tells the other who receives the news after twenty-five years with a straight face then shoots his old best friend dead.
judge says to him, why’d you have to shoot him dead after twenty-five years of friendship…he was just being honest.
old best friend says, i didn’t shoot him for being honest, i shot him for being stupid.
this is my fear for americans.
also where americans are concerned another story… two old friends walking down the road one says i caught my wife in bed just the other day with her fitness coach, they were buck naked slamming into one another like box cars when i unexpectedly came home from work.
what did you do the friend asked.
nothing his friend said, the bastard lied his way out of it.
this is my fear for americans in their dealings if not with jews per se with the big-admittedly elite jewish/israeli lobby in the u.s. -A.I.P.A.C. … and their minions in the u.s. – the neocons. No matter how they screw up…They’re ALWAYS peculiarly the teflon-neocon/s. Nothing sticks? Strange? Rocky Horror Picture Show?????? HAHAHA [not so] funny universe.
my interpretation… white people are so successful civilizationally speaking… they’re inured to their own white people’s Burdens. They figure it’s a given…and don’t pay it much mind? HAHAHAHA funny universe. Don’t think that though – can last much longer? Sadly. And funnily enough. Then again those are just my white genes speaking with the semitic ones in tow. Funny universe. HAHAHA. I wish white folks had their own t.v. i’d like to watch it.
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2 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 11 October 2007:
Thank you, Dr. Trikovic, for this interesting and disturbing information. Blackwater has been much in the news recently as to a lesser extent DynCor and Triple Canopy have been. MPRI clearly needs to be better known. In the aftermath of the Katrina disaster, Blackwater mercenaries were already used to ethnically cleanse New Orleans, kicking down doors, confiscating guns from people’s homes, and forcing people to evacuate who wanted to take their chances staying. The US government may some day get a taste of its own medicine when these groups become large and strong enough to turn on their master.
3 Comment by S. on 11 October 2007:
This is an excellent article, Dr. Trifkovic.
To those who do not know what MPRI is, I would add that there would be fewer wars in the world were the MPRI and similar companies banned.
Here is what is posted on the official MPRI site:
…”MPRI serves international security, military, and law enforcement customers. We enable nation-building and reform, …within the framework of emerging democracies….”
The US government increasingly relies on corporate enterprises such as Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI), which specializes on supplying military training and expertise to the US government and other countries. MPRI sees war as a commercial enterprise.
4 Pingback by Macedonia » Blog Archives » Robin Khadduri gets monthly shots of a drug that blocks the male hormone Lupron and is often used to treat prostate cancer. on 11 October 2007:
[...] The Really Bad Dogs of War by the government of Macedonia—as part of a U.S. military aid package—“to deter armed aggression [...]
5 Comment by Daniel on 11 October 2007:
You criticize the Croats for Operacija Oluja, but the Serbs would be the first to cleanse Kosovo, if the eyes of the world weren’t watching. Don’t be a hypocrite, there are no good people in the Balkans, just tough bastards and tougher bastards.
6 Comment by Johan Dieckmann on 11 October 2007:
(Re. comment #3)
“… MPRI sees war as a commercial enterprise. …”
True.
Q. When has the U.S. establishment not seen war as a commercial enterprise?
7 Comment by TRIFKOVIC on 11 October 2007:
My focus is not on various Balkan “bastards,” but rather on U.S. mercenaries acting — often criminally — as surrogates for the Government in various Balkan conflicts in which America had no rationally defined interest to be involved. Serbs, Croats, Muslims and Albanians may be more or less equally detestable to an outside observer, but for that very reason they should be left to their own devices: it is utterly irrelevant to the American interest whose flag flies over Pristina, Banja Luka, or Knin. American intervention in the Balkans has been a moral and geopolitical disaster on par with the war in Iraq.
8 Comment by Johan Dieckmann on 11 October 2007:
(Re. comment #7)
“… American intervention in the Balkans has been a moral and geopolitical disaster on par with the war in Iraq. …”
Cannot be more correct.
What payment will all this exact upon the U.S. (government, economy…) and when will it be due – if ever? In very practical terms (“burning in hell” hallucinations excluded, that is).
9 Comment by P. Stewart on 11 October 2007:
Dr. Trifkovic – Thank you so much for all your articles to this magazine. I am stumped as to WHY the US government has involved itself to this extent in the Balkans. Appeasement of Muslims by giving them a European foothold doesn’t seem strong enough. What are you views?
10 Comment by Djordje on 11 October 2007:
Mr. Stewart, simplest answer is usually the best. Wesley Clark himself has said it was to see if they could do it.
11 Comment by Yankee Doodle on 11 October 2007:
A very interesting article, Dr. T.
The reason is heroin, my dear Stewart.
There is no answer simpler than money, Djordje.
http://stopislamicconquest.blogspot.com/2007/10/man-in-middle.html
12 Comment by PAHKO on 11 October 2007:
Пара врти где бургија неће.
13 Pingback by The Really Bad Dogs of War by Srdja Trifkovic « Dandelion Salad on 12 October 2007:
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14 Pingback by Brunei » Blog Archives » Shore Bets: Top 10 Things to Do in Singapore on 12 October 2007:
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15 Comment by J. P. Maher on 12 October 2007:
Dr. Trifkovic
Did MPRI suffer losses in the Yugo-war? W. Clinton said the US lost not one trooper, which is remarkable, considering that on peacetime maneuvers or the 4th of July weekend, people get killed. — What is your appraisal of the following?
“NEW The report of a rescue helicopter crash on 03-28-99 have been indirectly confirmed by a Greek newspaper Athinaiki, which in its 04-03-99 issue reported that 12 bodies of American servicemen were delivered from Macedonia to Saloniki (Greece) military hospital #424 on 03-31-99 and later shipped to the US. Seven more bodies of American soldiers were delivered also from Macedonia to Greece on 04-01-99. The newspaper reports that the bodies of the dead American servicemen were delivered by American special troops, which were joined by Greek police on the state border. The fact of delivery of 19 bodies of American servicemen to Greece was independently confirmed by Macedonian customs officials. They said that the coffins were delivered in two batches – 12 and later 7 – escorted by American military officers. The bodies are believed to be those of American pilots and members of rescue teams.
NEW According to the latest report by Greek Athinaiki newspaper, NATO lost a total of 88 servicemen in Yugoslavia, of which 44 are Americans, 11 are Germans, 7 are British and 19 are of other nationalities. Athinaiki also believes that NATO lost 32 planes and helicopters in the conflict. NATO casualties reportedly are being transported back to home countries via Greece. It is certainly noteworthy that this independent look on NATO’s actual losses in Yugoslavia comes from a country-member of the Alliance. Yugoslav media recently released images of coffins with American servicemen being carried through a border checkpoint in Macedonia.
CH-53/53G heavylift troop transport/assault helicopter
First flight: 1974 (53E)
Crew: 3 pilots, 55 troops
Possibly operated over Yugoslavia by the US combat rescue units (US Navy and USMC). Max speed 315km/h, max vertical rate of climb 2500ft/min, service ceiling 18,500ft. Combat radius 925km. Can carry armed troops, light artillery and vehicles. The CH-53E theoretically can also carry AIM-9 AAMs for self-defense. NEW According to Russian Radio and RosBusinessConsulting news agency report on 04-02-99 Yugoslav air defenses shot down one NATO combat jet and two helicopters carrying 58 troops of NATO’s special rescue units. The incident occurred 200km to the south-west of Belgrade in the same area where another NATO aircraft was shot down earlier. According to the Russian Radio report all NATO pilots and troops involved in this incident are believed to be dead. There is no information about the types of aircraft shot down. The number of the troops reported to have been on board of the two helicopters (58) suggests a possibility that CH-53/53E heavylift transport/assault helicopters were shot down.
http://ban.junis.ni.ac.yu/avijacija/natodown.htm
“
16 Pingback by The Really Bad Dogs of War by Srdja Trifkovic « The Labyrinth on 12 October 2007:
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17 Comment by Aldebanlohoperaldi Huffghaffson on 12 October 2007:
I agree with Dr. Trifkovic. Daniel’s comments above have the ring of truth but it’s a question of approximate balance. Dan’s no doubt experienced (as most of us have) tough ‘bastards’ and tougher bastards… that’s a given in the world. It’s albeit thankfully not the majority. It’s no given there would be ethnic cleansing by Serbs. But the wild [& not so wild] world is young…and there’s no given there wouldn’t be, of course. That’s not really the issue Dan, but I hear you.
18 Comment by Mike Willard on 14 October 2007:
Such is the danger of foreign entanglements, misguided policy, and too damn much money.
I specifically remember discussion on this website regarding the use of mercenary units as a recommendation to supplement US military presence. Did I get this wrong, and how is this different from MPRI?
19 Comment by Mitchell G. Moffat, M.D. on 16 October 2007:
Dear Dr. Trifkovic,
Thirtyseven years ago today I was a 22 year old Marine draftee newly arrived in Vietnam. While I believe now that that war was not in our best interests, at the time I believed I was doing a great service for my country and for the ‘free world’. I was, after all, a cold war baby. My father, a draftee, fought in the Second World War, and his father, a draftee, fought in WWI. Today, I tell my four sons, we face the gravest threat ever, not only to our nation, but to Christianity and the West— and we do so without a draft.
To play the devil’s advocate, I’m not sure I see any significant difference between government-paid civilians, such as Blackwater, and government-paid volunteers who happen to wear federal uniforms. ( As I understand it, and I may be wrong, many of the Blackwater personnel are ex special forces, meaning their level of training and experience is far beyond that of the average federal trooper. But regardless of the truth of that contention, I find it difficult to believe the State Department would hire incompetent ‘cowboys’ to protect their personnel— personnel who are at the highest risk of any American in Iraq of being assassinated or kidnapped. )
American men today can send their mothers, daughters, sisters and wifes off to fight for them. Why? In part because too many of them are obtuse, or effete, or narcissistic. But part of it also, I believe, is because we as a nation view ’soldiering’ as just another job. And so, unless we can revive the deep-seated individual conviction that armed service is an occassional, but necessary, burden that must be borne by each male citizen, I see no compelling reason why our goverment would stop using mercenaries of both varieties.
20 Comment by Mitchell G. Moffat, M.D. on 16 October 2007:
Just a post scriptum to clarify my position: I was appalled at our Balkan intervention, and consider what we did to the Serbs as beyond the pale ( no matter what kind of volunteers we fought with ). I consider our invasion of Iraq a travesty, and proof to anyone with more than a nit’s wit that America is now an empire. I believe our government’s continuing lie that we are at war with terrorism and not Islam is contributing to our demise.
21 Comment by Iskander on 19 October 2007:
This article is plagiarism. Stale ideas borrowed from pro-Russian and anti-American authors. Trifkovic, a watchdog of Pan Slavism, is waving a tattered flag, which the naive and the dupes take for a flag of true anti-imperialism.
In imperialist Russia, the rulers are still fighting United States imperialism as in the time of the Soviet Union. Only the signboard has changed.
You who support his phony democratic ideas are either volunteers or mercenaries of Pan Slavism, a racist ideology, which has always put the Balkan peoples at loggerheads.
Down with Pan Slavism and Russian imperialism!
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